That Place in Time
Art Rock, Bitpop, Indie Rock, Chamber Pop, Post-Hardcore, Deathgrind, Doom Metal, Melodic Hardcore, Power Pop, Death Metal and more!
Mornin’ y’all.
Another post, another longer-than-expected gap between them. I again have to share that although I haven’t posted new music round-ups in a little while, I have made those playlists so you can find them over here:
I’ve taken to responding “morale is low” lately when asked how I’ve been doing, instead of “mental health is in the gutter!”. It’s possible I put too high an expectation on thinking the nicer weather would turn my brain around this year. And yet, as I think that I also think about the stuff I’d like to get to this summer - kayaking, more hikes, bike rides, maybe something like lawn bowling or kickball. When you’re about to turn 40 things like lawn bowling or bird watching really do start to appeal to you. The other day I caught myself thinking that it’d be nice to buy one of those “Easy Crosswords! Large Print!” books to work on now and again. Buying books feels like some odd kind of future proofing these days, too (“Sure, I’ve got too many books and haven’t read any of them, but some day I’ll have all the time in the world to read them right?”) Dangerous way to think! Does saying “I’ll read those books eventually” count as deferring your happiness? I feel like maybe.
Anyway, here’s a picture of an unhinged book I should have bought, but didn’t:
But I’m still listening to a lot of music, so on with the reviews. What have you been stoked about lately? What have you been listening to? Let me know.
Emoji legend:
⛏️ denotes picks of the week, my favs.
🌱 seedling denotes albums like a lot and expect could grow on me over the year.
✨ means not my fav but worth a look (if you like the genres listed in particular.)
✂ denotes favourite tracks from a given record.
As always, feel free to reach out over on BlueSky or join the Rosy Overdrive Discord server where I can be found now and again.
You can also find me in the corners of Rate Your Music scrounging for obscure emo, hardcore, indie rock and pop punk.
Don’t forget: if you’re reading this in your email it will be cut off.
Read on the web for the full list of reviews!
⛏️ Beach Bunny - Tunnel Vision (2025)
Genre: Indie Rock, Power Pop, Emo-Pop
Beach Bunny have either been a singles band or an EP band for me up until this point. Their debut had a few tracks I enjoyed, but Blame Game was a stack of four fizzy and addictive indie-power-pop songs I couldn't put down. Their second album Emotional Creature really did not land for me and felt kind of forgettable overall. The singles for this album seemed promising, though.
This band is most effective when they crank up the pop hooks knob, and thankfully they're back at that here. They take some stylistic detours - the verses of "Tunnel Vision" sound like them aping Paramore's 80s phase - but it doesn't detract when most of these songs have really solid, ear-worm level melodies when the choruses hit. I appreciate that they are taking a bit of a back-to-basics approach at times here on simpler, more direct songs like "Chasm" and "Pixie Cut".
Overall, solid stuff and maybe their strongest top-to-bottom release outside of Blame Game.
✂ Big Pink Bubble, Chasm, Tunnelvision, Clueless, Pixie Cut, Vertigo
⛏️ Propagandhi - At Peace (2025)
Genre: Melodic Hardcore, Crossover Thrash, Progressive Metal, Alternative Metal
Been a banner year for "albums that I like, but need a lot more time with to fully understand how I feel about them, resulting in a 3.5 star rating." This album is definitely one of my most anticipated albums of 2025. The changes to Propagandhi's sound over the years have been thrilling to follow, and Victory Lap proved there was a ton of gas left in the tank and stands shoulder to shoulder with their best records.
The singles for At Peace showed signs of another small change - less intensity, more simmering and boiling. Their music has always been immediate, even when paired with softer more introspective instrumentals. This is definitely their least immediate album, and maybe their most all over the map in terms of pacing. Certainly not an album I would point someone unfamiliar with the band towards.
But generally I liked these songs a lot, I just need more time to figure out how I feel about it as an album. For now, it's just good to have them back.
⛏️ Tapeworms - Grand Voyage (2025)
Genre: Glitch Pop, Indietronica, Bitpop, Picopop
I have a memory of enjoying Funtastic back in 2020, but in my mind it was a lot more of a "band" style thing with shoegaze and dream pop kind of stuff. They've really re-focused their sound on this record in a way that makes a lot of sense without dropping what made them interesting in the first place. Funtastic had a lot of synthy textures alongside their jangly noisy sound, but here they've dialed the latter way way back and are much more glitch/bitpop/picopop/etc. focused. They still have acoustic strums on songs like "Love and Pop", or hazy dreamy hooks on something like "That Place in Time", but it's texture rather than foundation.
Honestly, it really works for the band. They're way closer to something like a mix of early-and-late career Kero Kero Bonito than the shoegaze/noise pop of their last record. Dug this a whole lot and imagine it'll get a bunch of play this summer from me.
⛏️ Virtua Point Zero - Reconnection (2025)
Genre: Tracker Music
Amiga-based chiptune/tracker stuff from Data Airlines. Been craving some new chip music and just the other day I was scrounging around trying to find some and coming up mostly empty handed, so this lands at just the right time for me. Mostly upbeat energetic stuff that inches towards a brassy in-your-face EDM adjacent sound. I don't mind that brash kind of electronic music when it is couched in chiptune textures, so I'm digging this a lot.
🌱 Club Night - Joy Coming Down (2025)
Genre: Indie Rock, Emo, Noise Pop, Art Rock, Post-Hardcore
Heard an advanced stream of this record and it didn't immediately hit me in the same way that What Life did, but I enjoyed it. Circling back and trying to give this more time, and still really digging what this band gets up to. They bring to mind such a specific, isolated sound in emo and indie rock—particularly vocally and the way they are mixed in such a room-y way. It's giving early The Anniversary to me, but as I mentioned on the What Life review, also skewed indie rock bands like Wolf Parade and more. To some degree, this is more of the same but almost a doubling-down on what they are doing. It's more of... more.
There's an energy in their scrawled music that I feel is lacking—or often comes off forced—in a lot of modern emo-adjacent music.
🌱 Inhuman Nature - Greater Than Death (2025)
Genre: Thrash Metal, Crossover Thrash
Crossover thrash with some groovy hardcore riffing and gang chants. Narrowly avoids sounding like 80s-cheese throwbacks but instead just feels like what you want from this kind of stuff; heavy, headbang-y, thrashy in the right moments. Not sure any of these songs needed to pass the 4 to 5 minute mark, let alone 3 of them, but other than that I enjoyed my time with this.
Recommended if you liked that Grove Street album from a couple years ago.
🌱 Mei Semones - Animaru (2025)
Genre: Chamber Pop, Indie Rock, Bossa nova, Indie Folk, Math Pop, Singer-Songwriter
Wonderful and jazzy chamber-pop indie-rock etc. Lots of big melodies that stick despite the restless instrumentation and orchestral arrangements. This straddles the line between quiet and quirky in a way that you could recommend this to a fan of Fievel Is Glauque as easily as more traditionally indie sounding experimental noisy pop bands like Pom Poko. Hell, some of this sits in singer-songwriter territory as well. Really nice! I look forward to listening to this a few more times for sure.
🌱 Ukko's Hammer - Ukko's Hammer (2025)
Genre: Crossover Thrash, Metalcore
This is pretty sick! Genre tags are crossover thrash and metalcore, which makes sense because this is swirling with punk, hardcore, thrash and other types of metal influences and I guess it'd be hard to really drill down on to the specifics of what makes this work. Definitely has the chugga-chugga breakdowns of metalcore and crossover thrash, but never gets into the real chaotic strain of metalcore since the foundation is in speedy thrashy riffery but with textures set to "brutal." Vocalist seems very satisfyingly unhinged. Kick ass cover art, too.
🌱 Rodeo Boys - Junior (2025)
Genre: Indie Rock, Power Pop
Nice buzzy power pop meets indie rock. I recall enjoying Home Movies, but not enough for it to be on my year-end list—or even to review it on RYM, I suppose. They dip into punk-adjacent BPMs and drum beats on "Crystal, Pt. 1" and elsewhere they have a bit of that post-Weezer power pop kind of sound.
Maybe has a "too much of a good thing" problem going on at over 40 minutes and 14 songs, but if you like this kind of stuff there's some good tunes and crunchy hooks to be found here.
🌱 Sijjin - Helljjin Combat (2025)
Genre: Thrash Metal, Death Metal, Technical Thrash Metal
Very good meeting place of modern thrash with a whiff of technicality without being just ridiculous. Comment in the RYM box name checking ...And Justice for All makes sense to me as this is similarly riff-focused, as does the comment calling it "crushing mid-paced tech-deathrash." If you're coming here for the death part of that equation you'll probably be disappointed but if you like extended slabs of technical thrash that bring to mind titans of the early 90s then this will scratch an itch for sure. Vocal style aside, this gets close to activating the same part of my brain that goes nuts for dense thrash like Time Does Not Heal.
🌱 Mortuaire - Monde Vide (2025)
Genre: Death Doom Metal
Death metal from France that brings heavy groove 'n' doom with a slight crustified edge. What struck me most about this was their ability to inject evil, sludgy, crusty yet melodic atmosphere into their sound ("Monde Vide"). They take some really extended detours on these longer songs but they always seem anchored in the gut-level and never get too brainy-dork-death or egghead for my tastes. Some of these longer songs slow to a damn-near total-gridlock'd crawl of sludge and will probably be a bridge-too-far for people who are more interested in get-to-the-point death metal, but it fared nicely for me today.
✨ Little Low - Sunshine Guilt (2025)
Caught wind of this when someone from Hedge was posting about their singles and hyping it up as having a big time Vagrant Records emo-pop-punk kind of sound. And they're right! "Planets (Another You)" in particular has that mid tempo emo pop thing going on. As usual for my tastes, I think this is best when the energy is turned up a little bit ("Head Above The Clouds," "Stress Level Midnight" which gives a bit of Cadillac Blindside) but I enjoy their sound enough to iron over some of the less memorable songs. It's only 22 minutes long, so repeat listens might bury these into my brain a little more. I could see myself warming up on this over the summer.
✨ Caustic Wound - Grinding Mechanism of Torment (2025)
Genre: Deathgrind
I really like a lot of what is going on here - grinding riffs and divebomb-y flashy soloing that leads into enormous groove riffs - but I think my issue with death vocals is making some of this feel faceless to me. It's definitely not the worst example - you can make out the lyrics pretty often - but the vocals are a bit one (ok maybe two) note here.
Likely a MP not a YP and could also be something I sink into with multiple listens (I have softened on vocals just like this on albums many times in the past as I became more familiar with the record, so who knows.) Generally though, enjoyable stuff.
✨ Wretched Blessing - Psychic Barriers to Entry (2025)
Genre: Death Metal, Sludge Metal, Stenchcore
Caught my eye in the release bin because of the name + album art combo. Genres listed are death, sludge and stench? Sure, sign me up.
Some of this feels very "does what it says on the tin" but I didn't mind that. Opening track is by-the-numbers in a way that felt kind of satisfying? I appreciate some of the atmospheric posturing of putting the instrumental "Delusional" as second track, trying hard to conjure up an evil, foggy forest vibe or whatever.
I'm actually not quite sure if this clicks together as an EP, it feels a little like "this is the death metal song" and "this is the moody instrumental" then "this is the sludge song that lasts a little too long" etc. I happen to like all of those things so it's fine as a 16 minute EP but I'd be interested in how they further blur the lines between their influences and see about pacing it out on a whole ass record.
As this stands, not too bad. Worth a peek. Could use a jolt of energy in some of these songs, though.
✨ Metaphobic - Deranged Excruciations (2025)
Genre: Death Metal, Technical Death Metal
Really solid death metal with elements of technical and doom in their sound, but dropping a 10 minute song right in the middle of this thing really stopped the pace in its tracks. There's a lot going on here that I like and I'm really resisting calling it meat and potatoes, but when it fits it fits. Will have to come back to this when I am in more of a mood to inspect closely, but it seemed pretty good.
✨ Disrupted - Stinking Death (2025)
Genre: Death Metal
Crunchy old school Swedish style death metal with a light dusting of crust. A little bit of slammy energy here and there—even a pinch of symphonic-ish melody on the intro to the slow-tempo crusher "Funeral Vomit"—but mostly straight and to the point stuff. Another for the "Enjoyable! Should listen again" pile.
Heart Attack Man - Joyride the Pale Horse (2025)
Genre: Pop Punk, Alternative Rock, Post-Grunge, Emo-Pop
To my ears, this band has really taken a turn for the mid on their past couple records. Some of this kind of hits from an energy and loudness perspective, but they've sanded off a lot of the memorable riffs and hooks from their sound and these songs just don't hit the gut when propped up entirely by attitude and loudness alone.
They take a weird shot at being a poppy melodic hardcore band on "Can't Slow Down" (I see what you did there) and it doesn't totally work. "One More Song" or "Call of the Void" come close and there's probably an EP's worth of songs total here that I might want to listen to again, I'll say that. Cut this down to 4 songs and I'd maybe be optimistic that they could still have some juice left in this sound.
Album art had me expecting them to have taken a turn into 90s-aping nu-grunge but this is more of the same with diminishing results unfortunately.
PUP - Who Will Look After the Dogs? (2025)
Genre: Indie Rock, Pop Punk, Post-Hardcore, Noise Pop, Power Pop, Emo-Pop, Slacker Rock
I feel like the roll-out for The Unraveling of PUPTHEBAND had the band saying how weird they were getting and that they were really going into a bunch of different places with their sound, but ultimately the record didn't really sound all that weird to me aside from a few moments. I would say that here on their latest, there's a lot more textural weirdness going on in the production, but I also think much of it is bad. They're leaned into this post-Pinkerton, blown out Dave Fridmann production thing, with guitars set mainly to "skrownk" and I really feel like its in place of stronger songs. Much of this feels like reheated leftovers to me, melody and hook wise. It doesn't please me to say so, because this is seemingly a pretty personal record lyrically for the band... this didn't do a whole lot for me though, unfortunately.
Disfuneral - In Horror, Reborn (2025)
Genre: Death Metal
This band can't seem to escape being called Autopsy or Entombed worship, but my memory of the former was that they had a lot more doom in their sound than this does (though it has a bit in there, for sure.) I think as someone who isn't an expert in either of those bands, this sits right smack in the middle of that modern death metal worshipping the classics sound. Does the trick when I'm craving the next new-to-me death metal album, but like I say a lot in reviews on here, not sure how much of this is actually sticking to my brain outside of it just fitting the mold of what I want to hear today. Certainly well performed and not a bad listen overall. It got my toe tappin' ("Ripped from Within") and head boppin' ("Dark Ages Ritual") here and there. I wish I could go to bat for it, but generally it just felt OK to me.
Ancient Death - Ego Dissolution (2025)
Genre: Death Metal, Progressive Metal
I guess this is getting a bunch of (derogatory) comparisons to Blood Incantation just by virtue of the fact that it's partially death metal and partially engaging in a bunch of "other genres" like progressive metal and has clean atmospheric moments or extended kind of wanky progressive guitar solos. Basically the kind of thing that gatekeepers of the genre get mad at.
I welcome any and all genre experimentation in my metal, but for me this just doesn't excite. There's stretches of songs here that are quite interesting and do hit the spot when it comes to riffs, but it's also a little stock as well.
I'm going to have to investigate progressive death metal further, but maybe I've just grown tired of super, super fluid transitions between soft and loud moments in my metal. Maybe my steady diet of tech thrash/death makes me unable to sit still. A lot of the kind of post-rock adjacent atmosphere and slow, cautious building of energy between their extremes kind of wore me down. Not that they don't do hard cuts between their styles but I dunno, something about the mix of styles here just didn't land this morning.
If it sounds like it might be up your alley I'd check it out though, because it's not bad it just might not be for me personally.
Employed to Serve - Fallen Star (2025)
Genre: Metalcore, Groove Metal, Alternative Metal, Djent, Deathcore
I really enjoyed The Warmth of a Dying Sun and honestly didn't mind their turn from a more chaotic band into a much more smoothed down, dumb heavy metalcore band (with really serious-face bleak lyrics) on Eternal Forward Motion. Conquering felt like the band wasn't sure where to move next with this sound, and now on Fallen Star they're continuing to split the difference between brootal tiktok breakdown band and weird diversions into gross melodic rock and electronic bleepy bloop textural atmospherics.
I really don't know about this at all, they were already approaching forgettable heavy monotony on their last album but they've fully jumped that shark here. It's weird that much of this album sounds heavy in the way they used to be but retains almost nothing of interest inside these songs. Total bummer.
⛏️ Gravediggaz - 6 Feet Deep (1994)
Genre: Horrorcore, Boom Bap, Jazz Rap, Experimental Hip Hop
This still kicks a lot of ass. Like many albums from this era of rap, it's overlong and has a lot of skits but it strikes a wildly satisfying balance of horrorcore and cozy boom bap. When I think horrorcore, my mind usually lands on either something wildly explicit, or so outrageous that it becomes comedy (i.e. The South Park Psycho) and this feels a bit more in the middle. Not so over-the-top that it becomes surreal, still darkly humorous ("Don't worry, the judge is my uncle"), but not so savage that it feels ultimately nasty. Still hits after all these years.
Just lots of dope beats by Prince Paul and sick performances from RZA, Frukwan, and Poetic.
✨ Timeshares - Timeshares (2009)
Another one of those personal MP3 classic circa the late 00s. Around this time was when I realized that there were revival scenes firing on all cylinders around different kinds of stuff I loved as a teenager - second wave emo, gruff melodic punk, etc. so I hold that time in my life in a certain regard.
Timeshares went on to release a couple LPs that I recall hearing and thinking were fine, but "Sarah, Send Your Driver" from this EP was always the core tune from them for me. In particular I think there's an energy in these versions that lacks on the full length.
Regardless, all three songs are nice beer-soaked singalong melodic and poppy punk with the flannel-edged vibe. Used to spin the hell out of this alongside stuff like Comfort At Any Cost back in 2009.
✨ Rude - Outer Reaches (2021)
Genre: Death Metal
Pretty gnarly technical death metal. I've seen this band lumped in with the "modern OSDM" movement, which they certainly are, but I enjoyed how this harkens back to when technical death metal meant more "has tons of riffs and tempos that they jump between with a vaguely progressive whiff" and less that "is a chaotic brickwalled mess with a billion notes in your face" sound. Definitely time and place for the latter but this is just a lot of cool riffs and mean atmosphere, then once and a while they've got some fun skrownky bass stuff going down.
This being an EP almost makes me think it's cast-offs from other releases because they toss an instrumental at track two, making the whole thing feel a bit more like a collection of random songs. "Chaos (Discarded)" really rips too so following it up with an instrumental just feels odd, pacing wise. I do generally like what they are getting up to here, though.
This makes me wonder about their full-lengths because it was a little uneven but I keep wondering if it's the EP format. I'll have to listen to Remnants... because the art kicks ass.
✨ Chester Copperpot - Poems & Short Stories (1996)
Genre: Power Pop
Huh, must be something in my brain or in the water because somehow I've listened to a bunch of albums this week that all have me thinking about The Figgs.
This sits right there in that 90s overlap of poppy alternative rock with a big time power pop slant. Trying really hard not to say pop punk, because I think there was a lot of pop punk adjacent bands in this space that really don't fit into that genre, but just play vaguely punk influenced alternative rock that also has big hooks and power pop vibes.
Absolutely sits rock solid at that three star place where a lot of this isn't memorable, but I like the sound enough that I don't care too much. If you don't mind a lot of mid tempo, melodic power pop there's some songs here that you might dig.
✂ Strawberries, Full of Lard, Derome
✨ Cadillac Blindside - Read the Book, Seen the Movie (2000)
Genre: Emo, Post-Hardcore
Cadillac Blindside's These Liquid Lungs is one of my favourite underrated gems of the emo-pop genre. I had their debut album downloaded via FTP back in my College days, but I never listened to it quite as much as their next record. I described These Liquid Lungs as "if The Get Up Kids were gothy sad drunkards" and while that does make sense for that album... it makes even more sense here. This is their Four Minute Mile to These Liquid Lungs's Something to Write Home About, so to speak.
Much scrappier youthful performances here, with less precision and heft behind the production. They really lean into the slow-to-mid-tempo, churningly melencholic, let's take a walk in the graveyard in the rain kinda songs here ("This One's on Me"). That's not to say they aren't still doing faster tempos but this really sits on the fence between their emo foundation and their hook-focused rock songs that they'd hone on the follow up. Like, the opening to "The Bottom Line" is way more "midwestern emo band" than anything they'd go on to do, and they juxtapose that opening with a kind of standard emo-adjacent punk rock barn burner kind of thing. You can still hear them taking their building blocks and just plopping them together, is what I'm saying.
But I have a lot of time for this kind of stuff and songs like "At Wit's End" or "Just Pull the Trigger" still hit hard when I'm craving this sound. They just don't quite have the right set of songs at this point, but I admire their gumption anyway.
No Motiv - And the Sadness Prevails (1999)
Genre: Punk Rock, Pop Punk, Emo-Pop, Alternative Rock, Melodic Hardcore
Have heard a few No Motiv songs on Vagrant compilations back in the 00s but never actually sat down and listened to one of their albums.
Going just based on vibe of their earlier albums and artwork alone this seems to be their transition away from more straightforward melodic hardcore EpiFat stuff and towards more mid-tempo emo-rock kind of songs. Spent a good chunk of this wondering where the hell the Melodic Hardcore sub-tag came from, but "So What" eventually proved they still have that in their sound. There's a couple gang-vocal moments as well that reveal the members' background in that kind of music. "Tribute" also fits the EpiFat style pop punk sound.
Overall, this is fine. A couple tracks were pretty satisfying but it does feel like a band stuck between where they are and where they want to go. My memory of songs like "Celebrate" and "Get a Life" from Vagrant comps is that they lean all the way into the chunky alt-rock emo-pop video game soundtrack kind of vibe, and I wonder if that suits them better or not for a whole album's length. Might have to find out.
Digger - Monte Carlo (2000)
Genre: Pop Punk
Digger are another one of those bands I've tried to get into what seems like a million times over the years. I heard some of their songs on Hopeless comps but they never stuck out to me. They sit on the shelf alongside bands like Gameface where they seemed to have a cult following but their albums haven't hooked me. This is probably the fifth or sixth time I've tried listening to them, and after skipping around some songs off their other records, the energy of "Detroit River" caught me enough to take the whole album for a spin.
When the band keeps their energy levels at a similar height of that opening track, this stuff is a-OK pop punk with some emo in there for good measure. Going from the mid-tempo "Plastic Wings" into an acoustic interlude really dragged me down though. I assumed they were ending the vinyl's A-side with that acoustic diversion but nah. As usual, 45 minutes for this kind of thing is stretching it a bit, when a lot of these songs are just alright.
Take the best 4 or 5 songs here and you've got a pretty good EP, though.
Face to Face - Ignorance Is Bliss (1999)
Genre: Pop Punk, Emo, Emo, Alternative Rock
Interesting attempt by Face to Face to take a few steps away from their EpiFat influenced skate punk sound and towards a more "mature", melodic rock style approach. Some of this gets way too close to watered down Foo Fighters style stuff, and some of it does a good job of mixing their energetic approach with emo-esque alt-rock ("I Know What You Are"). Some of it is just sounds like sappy radio melodic rock ("Lost".)
In some ways, they were ahead of the curve on punk bands going into alt rock as some of this almost sounds like when modern bands turn emo-alt-rock-grunge.
Unfortunately, it's almost an hour long and a number of these songs are just too long! Cut a bunch of the mid-tempo stuff from this album and you might have something. By track 10 or so you'll probably be done with this, as I was. Gets an extra half-star for being an intriguing turn for the band.
🍁 Canadian Pop Punk Corner! 🍁
For whatever reason, I decided to revisit and review a ton of 90s and 00s Canadian pop punk at some point in the past month. Here’s the results of that odd rabbit hole.
Closet Monster - A Fight for What Is Right (1999)
Genre: Pop Punk, Skate Punk
Been thinking a bit about Canadian pop punk and this album came to mind. Songs like "Uniqualist Me", "Starving", "Suburbia" and "One Capitalist Always Kills Many (Fat Cats)" were MP3s set to me by a friend of a friend in High School and are burned into my brain as a result. Also have a weirdly specific memory of my friend from Coburg, Ontario showing me this CD after seeing them live. I ended up seeing Closet Monster in my hometown and even wore their shirt around, but I was never really listening to their albums top-to-bottom in 1999 or 2002 or whatever so I figured I should take a peek through their discography.
Closet Monster sit in a weird place in Canadian music - they put their later releases out on their own label, Underground Operations (allowing them to also release stuff from bands like Hostage Life and Protest the Hero). They're also a part of Sum 41's history, with member Mark Spicoluk having been an early bassist for the band. Some members of the band also gained notoriety for being chosen by Nettwerk to be Avril Lavigne's backing band ("they wanted young performers who were up and coming from the Canadian punk rock scene who would fit with Lavigne's personality.")
Anyway, on their first record they sound as you might expect a Canadian pop punk band to sound in 1999. This is the kind of thing you'd expect to hear opening for a band like Sum 41 in 1999 before they blew up (or maybe more established bands at the time like Gob). The one thing they have different from other bands of this ilk is that—while they could sit alongside Cheshire-era blink-182 (with a watery Fenix TX thing going on)—they also fancy themselves something of a mallrat Propagandhi, singing about how "Karl would role over in his grave", or how they've spent "16 years living life without a clue then I re-educated and re-evaluated" and now sing "fuck to your anthem, and your flag" etc. You get the sense they're reaching hard for stuff here, with the candy-coated album cover seeming to be an intentional little commentary on how their poppy snotty music betrays what they're trying to say.
It all feels like exactly what it is - teenagers who want to seem like they're smarter than they are and leaning into politics being their identity. But that said, it's admirable and they hit on a bunch of topics you wouldn't hear bands like this approaching at their ages. They can't really pull it off as well as someone like Propagandhi would go on to, but later their sound would at least gain a bit more of an edge to match what they were trying to say.
A handful of these songs are fun diversions and trips down memory lane for me. Can't really say I'd recommend this to anyone who didn't already know about them, but I also hear enough of myself in these songs from the same time I was in high school that I can't outright dismiss them.
Not by Choice - Maybe One Day (2002)
Genre: Pop Punk
Pop punk up here in the Great White North really existed in the shadow of Sum 41 there for a while, huh? Here we have another band from Ajax, Ontario with more than just geographic ties to Sum 41 (Dave Baksh was featured on their independently released EP.) That's about as far as the comparisons go though, as their music is more along the lines of power-chord pop-rock than anything punk in foundation.
Sometimes, forgettable albums like this have a hit single that still bangs despite the album sucking, but "Standing All Alone" (which got tons of play on MuchMusic thanks to CanCon laws lol) is just as immemorable as the rest of this dreary pop punk paste. Would only recommend this to someone who thought Simple Plan wasn't forgettable enough.
Another Joe - Cran-Doodle Daddy (1998)
Genre: Pop Punk, Skate Punk
Makes sense that this band was buddy buddy with Gob and that they put out that split EP together. This might scratch an itch if you're looking for similar kind of fast and hooky skate pop punk along the lines of Too Late... No Friends... but nothing here stuck to my brain and by the time 30 minutes rolled around I was ready for it to end. High on energy and attitude, low on songs.
Marilyn's Vitamins - Politics on the Dancefloor (1998)
Genre: Punk Rock
Vaguely crusty, mostly political melodic punk rock from Orangeville, ON. Sounds like the kind of band that really likes Rancid. Most of the punk energy here is in the spittle-caked vocals and the gang-chants. As far as this kind of stuff goes, this is reasonably diverting and at least goes down easy before it gets overly repetitive (by about the half-way point).
Members would go on to form Hostage Life, Bombs Over Providence, and Dead Letter Dept. among others.
Fat Chance - Bologma (1997)
Genre: Pop Punk, Skate Punk
Listen... you see an album with this kind of cover art from 1997 in the Pop Punk charts when filtered by Canada, and you have to go download it on SoulSeek. That's just the law.
This is skate-style pop punk from Lindsay, Ontario played with uhhh a keyboard set to the piano settings sometimes and other times a synth setting? The skate punkers wiki calls this "fast and technical progressive punk" and honestly I guess that's not wrong.
Sometimes the back and forth singing and the production quality will make you think of Cheshire Cat ("Adamant.") Clearly this group of kids had some amount of talent and the ambition to match it, but not sure this is anything I'd actually want to listen to again.
That’s it, that’s all. Be excellent to one other.